根据英国态度调查的最新宗教数据，穆斯林比其他任何宗教群体更有可能保持其信仰（留存率为93%）（Curtice等，2019）。此外，皮尤研究中心的最新研究显示，“美国穆斯林中离开伊斯兰教的人数，被皈依伊斯兰教的人数所抵消”（Mohammed和Sciupac，2018），其中美国有23%的人离开了信仰。离开信仰的原因包括反感有组织的宗教（12%）、不相信上帝（8%）、从未与信仰“产生联系”（8%）、不信教（5%）等。尽管这项研究缺乏科学或达尔文主义的内容，但必须指出，大多数参与者不会说英语，需要波斯语或阿拉伯语翻译。此外，在美国皮尤调查中离开伊斯兰教的人，更多是来自伊朗的移民（22%）（皮尤研究方法）。这些要点或许有助于解释英国和美国穆斯林信仰留存率估计之间的差异。此外，这些发现并不支持达尔文进化论对西方世界的广大民众（无论是穆斯林还是基督徒）在神学或人口层面产生“革命性”影响这一观点。

According to the latest religious data from the British attitude survey, Muslims are more likely to retain their faith than any other religious group (93% retention) (Curtice et al., 2019). Moreover, the latest Pew Research study revealed that ‘the share of American Muslims who leave Islam is offset by those who become Muslim’ (Mohammed and Sciupac, 2018) with 23% leaving the faith in the USA. Reasons for leaving include a dislike for organised religion (12%), disbelieving in God (8%), never ‘connecting’ with the faith (8%), not being religious (5%) among others. Despite the lack of science or Darwinism in this study, it is vital to note that most participants could not speak English and required Farsi or Arabic translation. Moreover, those who left Islam in the USA Pew Survey were more likely to be immigrants from Iran (22%) (Pew Research Methodologies). These points may help explain disparities between UK and US Muslim faith retention estimates. Furthermore, these findings do not support Darwinian evolution as having a ‘revolutionary’ theological or demographic impact on the actual masses (either Muslim or Christian) in the Western world.

相反,无论在穆斯林还是基督徒的案例中,最有影响力的往往是政治意识形态(如自由主义),或是反对宗教的道德论证(有时还带有会动摇宗教核心教义的自由主义预设),这一点由马修·谢尔德(Matthew Sheard)指出。他自己进行了一项包含98名无神论者参与者的研究,并得出结论:

Rather, in both Muslim and Christian cases political ideology, like liberalism, or moral arguments against religion (sometimes with liberal assumptions which undermine key teachings of religion) were most influential as noted by Matthew Sheard, who ran his own study with 98 atheist participants concluding:

与Budd的研究一样，受试者给出的不信宗教的理由中，也包括反宗教的因素；对神学的反对意见与宗教带来的创伤性经历或导致宗教怀疑的个人创伤同样普遍。然而，尽管理性主义、无神论的政治激进主义以及与无神论者的接触占所给理由的约四分之一，但很少提及“理性主义经典”，也很少涉及科学或达尔文主义（Sheard, 2014, p.12）。

As with Budd’s study, the reasons subjects gave for their unbelief included anti-religious causes; objections to theology were as prevalent as traumatic experiences of religion or personal traumas that caused religious doubts. However, though rationalism, atheistic political radicalism and contact with atheists constituted about a quarter of the reasons given, there was very little reference to the ‘rationalist classics’, to science, or to Darwinism (Sheard, 2014, p.12).

有少量甚至没有证据表明，达尔文的进化论会在基督教和伊斯兰教信仰群体中导致背教，相反，正如尤素福·舒胡德（Youssef Chouhoud）所考察的那样，它引发的是怀疑。

There is little to no evidence that Darwinian evolution creates apostasy in Christian and Muslim faith communities, rather, that it creates doubt as investigated by Youssef Chouhoud.

Chouhoud 对 600 名来自社会各阶层的穆斯林参与者进行了研究，询问他们是什么引起了自己的“怀疑”。8% 的参与者将他们“极大的怀疑”归因于达尔文的进化论，而将其归因于宗教教条式态度的则有 14%（Chouhoud, 2018, p.6）。归根结底，新无神论护教者所使用的科学论证，在导致穆斯林或基督徒信仰群体中的宗教叛教方面可能并不起决定性作用；不过，这些科学论证在改变基督徒和穆斯林的想法上确实有一定的、但很有限的效果。

Chouhoud studied 600 Muslim participants from a cross-section of society identifying what causes them to ‘doubt’. 8% of participants attributed their ‘great deal of doubt’ to Darwinian evolution compared to 14% who attributed it to religiously dogmatic attitudes (Chouhoud, 2018, p.6). Ultimately, scientific arguments used by New Atheist apologists may not be instrumental in causing religious apostasy within Muslim or Christian faith communities, however, the scientific arguments were marginally effective in changing the minds of Christians and Muslims.

新无神论者同时利用图书销售和社交媒体来推广其主张,其中YouTube视频占据重要地位,新无神论的材料也可以在各种非官方网站上免费获取。只有少数新无神论者拥有自己的YouTube频道,其中包括理查德·道金斯(Richard Dawkins),他的频道名为"理查德·道金斯科学与理性基金会"(Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason)。尽管该频道的视频更新并不频繁,截至2020年4月18日,它仍有334,000名订阅者。萨姆·哈里斯(Sam Harris)拥有一个官方YouTube频道,名为"Sam Harris",订阅者为394,000

New Atheists use both book sales and social media to enhance their message, with YouTube videos featuring heavily and New Atheist material being freely available on a variety of non-official sites. Only a few New Atheists have their own YouTube channels including Richard Dawkins who has a channel titled ‘Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason’ which, despite infrequently posting videos, still has 334, 000 subscribers (18 April 2020). Sam Harris has an official YouTube channel titled ‘Sam Harris’ with 394,000

截至2020年4月18日，订阅人数为……（原文此处以人数表示）。其他新无神论者，如劳伦斯·克劳斯（Lawrence Krauss），经营的频道规模较小，订阅人数为3,140人（2020年4月18日），因此不值得纳入考虑。

subscribers (18 April 2020). Other New Atheists, like Lawrence Krauss, host minor channels having 3,140 subscribers (18 April 2020) and are, therefore, not worthy for consideration.

通过谷歌趋势分析这些YouTube数据，可以让这些数字更具参照意义。

Analysing these YouTube figures through Google Trends, puts these figures into perspective.

通过比较理查德·道金斯与一档热门电视节目在YouTube上的搜索热度来进行分析。

By comparing YouTube search interest of Richard Dawkins against a popular T.V.

个性方面；具体而言，是英国社会评论员皮尔斯·摩根（Piers Morgan）在2008年至今（2020年4月18日）的情况。在此期间，摩根的“平均分”为16分，道金斯则为10分。

personality; specifically, the UK social commentator Piers Morgan, from the years 2008 to the present (18 April 2020), Morgan scores 16 ‘average points’ to Dawkins’s 10 over this period.

通过分析同一时期的“网络搜索”数据，得出的平均分为11。

Analysing ‘web searches’ instead for the same period, establishes an average score of 11

要点：摩根对道金斯第4点的回应 如果这些比较在美国也得到重复验证，那么道金斯的社会影响力就会减弱。若将塞缪尔·哈里斯的YouTube谷歌趋势数据与社会评论员乔·罗根在同一时期（2008年至2020年4月）的数据进行比较，我们会发现罗根的平均得分为23分，而哈里斯仅为3分。考虑到道金斯和哈里斯是最受欢迎的“新无神论者”，很难想象他们在社交媒体上的活动能够充分影响英语国家西方社会中基督徒或穆斯林的人口结构变化或背教现象。

points for Morgan to Dawkins’s 4. If these comparisons are replicated in the US, Dawkins’s social impact lessens. If we compare Sam Harris’ YouTube Google Trends data with the social commentator Joe Rogan for the same period (2008 till April 2020) we find Rogan scores on average 23 points to Harris’ 3 points. Considering that Dawkins and Harris are the most popular New Atheists, it is difficult to imagine that their social media activity can sufficiently influence demographic change or apostasy among Christians or Muslims in the English-speaking Western world.

新无神论者在推特上的追随者比在其他平台上更多。推特是一个以文字为主、字符数量有限的平台，因此很难通过它改变人们的观点。尽管如此，我收集了最知名的新无神论者的推特时间线，旨在分析他们的转推、点赞和回应，并评估新无神论者是否借助前文所述的科学论证，成功地改变了人们在这些问题上的看法。在方法上，我遇到了两个主要问题（其中之一是推特将时间线推文的数量限制在3200条）。

New Atheists have more followers on Twitter than other platforms. Twitter, being a text-based programme with limitations on numbers of characters, is a difficult platform through which to alter people’s opinions. Nevertheless, having collected the twitter time-lines of the most prominent New Atheists with the aim of analysing re-tweets, likes and responses, I have assessed whether New Atheists have been successful in changing people’s minds on these issues by employing the previously outlined scientific arguments. Methodologically, I encountered two primary issues (that Twitter limits the number of time-line tweets to 3200)

(参见Twitter网站)。此外,即使咨询了数据科学家以缓解这些问题,我仍未找到一种方法来访问转发或点赞该帖子的账户。

(see Twitter website). Moreover, even after consultation with Data Scientists to mitigate these issues, I could not identify a way to access the accounts of those who ‘retweeted’ or ‘liked’ a said post.

根据对理查德·道金斯、塞缪尔·哈里斯、丹尼尔·丹尼特、史蒂文·平克、A. C. 格雷林、劳伦斯·克劳斯和彼得·辛格时间线的整理，我使用关键词统计了这些主要人物在推特上以科学论证反驳“上帝论题”的次数。关键词包括但不限于“bible”、“Quran”、“creation”、“intelligent design”、“creationism”、“creationist”、“Darwin”、“Darwinism”等。研究目的在于，通过追踪帖子发布前后转发者或点赞者的行为，确定这些推文的影响力。遗憾的是，这一目标被认为没有必要，因为只有四条来自理查德·道金斯的推文与新无神论著作中强调的反对上帝叙事的科学论证相关，而且这四条都是从其他账号转发的。推文的ID分别为918078516608032000、918078459569737729、918078401264717000和918078321820340225，内容并不突出。例如，道金斯转发了这样一句话：“没有上帝，生物不可能如此复杂、精妙而具有功能。”如果你这样想，请去学一学生物学。（道金斯，推特）。这一表述缺乏论证，对任何想要背离信仰的人几乎没有影响。评论区进一步显示，道金斯的推特在多大程度上类似于无神论的回音室，点赞最多的评论大多来自那些本already与道金斯持相似观点的人。

Following collation of the time-lines of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, A. C. Grayling, Lawrence Krauss and Peter Singer, I used key words to establish the number of times these key figures attempted to use their scientific arguments against the ‘God thesis’ on twitter. Keywords included, but were not limited to, ‘bible’, ‘Quran’ ,‘creation’, ’intelligent design’, ‘creationism’, ‘creationist’, ‘Darwin’, ‘Darwinism’ among others. The objective was to establish the efficacy of these tweets on re-tweeters or likers by tracking their behaviour before and after the post was made. Unfortunately this was deemed unnecessary as only four tweets, from Richard Dawkins, seemed to be relevant to the scientific arguments against the God narrative emphasised in New Atheist writings, and all were retweeted from other accounts. The tweet ID’s were 918078516608032000, 918078459569737729, 918078401264717000 and 918078321820340225 and they were unextraordinary. For example, Dawkins retweets ‘ “Without God, living things couldn’t be so complex, elegant and functional.” If that’s what you think, go away and learn some biology.’ (Dawkins, Twitter). This statement lacks an argument and confers minimal impact on anyone wanting to apostatise. The comment section of the tweet further outlines the extent to which Dawkins’s twitter resembles an atheistic echo chamber, with the most liked comments originating from those already expressing similar sentiments to Dawkins’s.